Sammy Skirmisher and the Needler Crystal Mines
by Sparky Jolteon
Summary: Follow the journey of a young champion Skirmisher commander named Sammy as he leads his tactically naive post-Covenant troops into a mysterious abandoned underground asteroid mining complex. Initially, they are in search of the unknown whereabouts of the mining crew that was stationed there, but suddenly, hostile contacts begin appearing everywhere! Can Sammy and his units survive?
1. Prologue

_Sammy Skirmisher and the Needler Crystal Mines_

A _Halo_ fanfic by: Sparky L. Jolteon (originally completed 3/11/13).

 ***** ** _Prologue_** *****

The year is A.D. 2550. Humanity and the Covenant are in the middle of a great war for control of the Milky Way, and both sides fight with valor and conviction of what they believe to be a just enough cause. For the humans, this simply means survival as a species, while for the Covenant, it means eliminating those they deem to be sacrilegious and an affront to the race they revere as gods, the Forerunners. The galaxy reeks of war across tens of thousands of light-years and throughout hundreds of individual star systems. However, one place that remains relatively peaceful is the distant planet of Chu'ot, and orbiting the planet itself, a smaller moon called Eayn. It is here and now where our protagonist Samuel Oliver Skirmisher (this is the rough English translation of his native name, Sam Yol Sim) is born into a humble Skirmisher household consisting of both his parents and nearly fifteen siblings. Sammy is the smallest offspring from his mother's second brood of eggs, and proves to be a rather feisty skirmisher child, especially for a runt.

Fast-forward fourteen years to A.D. 2564, and after seeing much combat and gaining a great deal of firsthand combat experience within the Covenant military, Sammy is now a battle-hardened veteran of the skirmisher forces, and having achieved the coveted rank of champion, he has finally garnered enough authority to lead small groups of lesser troops under his own command. By now, a lot of things have changed in the world around him as well. Most humans and most Covenant are presently united in a fairly tentative alliance, and the events surrounding Harvest, Arcadia, Shield World 0459, Reach, Installation 04, Earth, Installation 05, the Ark, neo-Installation 04, and Requiem are all but fairly distant memories in the minds of most, but the lessons learned and the consequences sown from said encounters are all still very real in the lives of many alive today. Sammy is certainly no exception. It was he who saw his fair share of action during the events on Reach and select space battles occurring from 2552-2557. In most of those conflicts, he proved to be a particularly vicious warrior, sometimes slaying as many as fifty UNSC soldiers in a single battle. He accomplished this mostly by fighting from range armed with his inborn sense of marksmanship coupled with a needle rifle, a Covenant carbine, a focus rifle, or even a beam rifle if he was lucky enough to get his paws on one, as the overwhelming majority of beam rifles were partitioned off exclusively for use by jackal snipers. That is not to assume that he is a shoddy fighter in close quarters engagements though, for in some cases, he was a more brilliant close-range fighter than most others within his regiment despite "only" being a skirmisher. Only is a relative word of course, since some elites and perhaps even an isolated brute or two were jealous of his exceptional prowess, although they would never tell him that outright.

Nowadays, he is exceedingly proud of both his position and his talents, and strongly tends to show a high level of consideration for his fellow infantrymen in the combat zone, even the lowliest grunt or the most insignificant drone. As such, he yields a good deal of trust and admiration from all under his supervision, which is absolutely crucial for any competent Covenant commander. With each passing day, he grows a little bit wiser and a little bit more influential within the Covenant military, and as each day's new challenge comes, he faces each one head-on and with a renewed vigor virtually unparalleled by his fellow officers. Anticipating his future to be even brighter than his past, he looks forward to living life to the fullest and outperforming all others in the process. This is his story.


	2. The Wild Warrior's Heart

**_Chapter I: The Wild Warrior's Heart_**

All is quiet for many a crewman on the Covenant cruiser _Celestial Asceticism_. It is 5:30 A.M. for those onboard the ship, and besides a few auxiliary crewmembers and technicians on the bridge and in the engine room, everyone is either fast asleep or half-awake and on-duty. The former is true for Champion Commander Sammy Skirmisher, who lies in a deep sleep alone in his personal quarters. His bedroom is exceedingly tidy, with nary a scattered object to be found. On his nightstand sits a dimly lit holopicture of his girlfriend and potential mate, a stellar young female skirmisher named Zoy (English equivalent: Zoey). His bedspread is made of only the finest available silken fabrics, and his room's internal temperature is maintained at a solid seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit courtesy of the ship's custom-tailored heating/cooling system. Pristine though his room might be, Sammy's mental state attests to another situation entirely.

In his mind, an epic dream ensues, featuring him fighting on the front lines of battle alongside his trusty squad of troops. He eliminates enemy after enemy with relative ease and his squad does the same, only to be greeted by even more hostile combatants soon after the previous ones are defeated. "I'm running low on ammo!" a beleaguered major grunt cries out to his immediate left. "Same here!" another one shouts out to his right. "Just keep pushing, we almost have 'em!" he yells back at them as he downs yet another enemy with his focus rifle. Sure enough, the enemies finally stop coming as Sammy takes a deep breath and reassures his soldiers. "Okay, I think that's it. They're gone. We've won. It's over," he informs them. Suddenly, a huge swarm of unknown hostiles appears all around them and immediately begins to overwhelm his entire squad with impunity. "What the… all units, fall back, fall back, NOW!" he hollers out as soldier after soldier of his falls to this frighteningly and surprisingly efficient entity. He continues to clear out an opening for his escaping troops with what little charge he has left in his weapons, when suddenly he finds himself standing all alone surrounded by a seemingly infinite amount of these mysterious creatures. "YAAAAAH!" he shrieks as he plunges headlong into the crowd of little beasties firing nonstop and flailing his limbs all around him in a desperate attempt to annihilate every last target as best he can. After a pitched battle, he lies in the middle of a gruesome pool of murky olive-hued blood completely motionless, weaponless, and without any further opposition in sight. "Heh heh heh ha ha!" he begins to chuckle to himself satisfactorily. Then, as he turns to leave the area, one more of the strange savage creatures appears from nowhere and latches onto his upper back. "Agh!" he screams as he falls to the ground and an intensely burning sensation unlike any other ever known to him before fills his entire body. He then see his life flash before his eyes and Zoey smiling at him one last time before blacking out completely.

"Ah! What was that?!" Sammy yelps as he reawakens abruptly in his bed. "Oh… what… it was only… a dream? Thank heaven!" he gasps as he steadily regains his composure. He glances briefly over at his alarm clock and mentally records the time. It reads 6:45 A.M. "Quarter 'til. Good, got another fifteen minutes to head down to the mess hall for an early morning breakfast to start off my day," he mutters to himself softly. As he arises from his bed, he daintily pulls his covers back, affixes the ends of it to a pair of small hooks around the edge of his mattress, and walks over to his nearby dressing area. After pausing to think for a moment, he decides to wear his standard ceremonial suit and his favorite color dress pants over his somewhat meager sleepwear, while around his neck, he hangs a small metallic chain with a small yellow star-shaped attachment dangling from it. Looking in the mirror, he slicks back his ruffled plumage with some fresh saliva and murmurs, "Morning tough guy. Lookin' sharp!" Satisfied with his appearance, he locks his door and heads out of his quarters into the adjacent hallway. The halls on his end of the _Celestial_ lie almost eerily silent, for besides the faint intermittent pitter-patter of the hooked claws on the ends of his toes hitting the cool metal floor with every step he takes, there is nothing to be heard.

As he passes the first junction in the hall ahead of him, he sees a minor jackal security guard patrolling the hallway wrapping around the corner to his right. "Top o' the morning to ya Commander!" he says cheerily as he gives Sammy a short skirmisher-style salute. "Same to you pal, same to you!" he replies with a smile as he nods respectfully. As he continues on his way to the dining area, he traverses a small escalator and a short flight of ramps until finally arriving at his destination. Upon entering the mess hall, he sees a small line already starting to form from all the other early risers on the ship. He takes his place in line and patiently waits his turn to receive his morning meal. "Breaded thornbeast and gravy with biscuits or scrambled ostrich eggs and bacon?" the cook offers Sammy. "Uh, I'll take the eggs and bacon," Sammy answers. He had consumed thornbeast recently for dinner, and not only that, but he found the taste of fresh ostrich eggs to be rather refreshing to start his day off. That particular Earth-borne food was quite delectable to him, as was the bacon. He moves down toward the drink dispensers and fills up a tall glass to the brim with haloberry juice. Haloberry juice was derived from a somewhat rare berry colloquially referred to by most as a "haloberry" due to its source of origin being certain wilderness areas of the halo installations. It was an intensely bitter berry in its raw form, but when blended with the right amount of sugar and water, it made for a pretty tasty and highly nutritious beverage. Afterwards, he picks a spot on an isolated bench on the far side of the cafeteria and enjoys his food by himself. Once his meal is finished, he places his tray in an empty sink near the entrance to the scullery and reenters the main hallway. After a brief stop in the nearest bathroom for self-explanatory reasons, he goes into the ship's central boardroom in preparation for a debriefing on his next mission.

Taking his seat in the boardroom, the ship's captain, a tall slender commander elite named Zul Djima in full ceremonial dress paces back and forth across the opposite end of the room. "I wonder what he's gonna tell us to do today," a gunner grunt sitting next to Sammy states. "Me too," Sammy responds. A short while later, the commander and his co-commanding officer approach a large metal podium in the middle of the room before clearing his throat and beginning to speak. "Good morning champion skirmisher squad! I hope you're prepared for what's in store for you today, because I'm deploying you all down to the surface of a small planetoid about five million miles out from Installation 06. As you might already know, there's a large mining operation going on down there to help replenish our needler crystal supply, mainly for our needlers and needle rifles. However, just a few hours ago, we received some isolated reports of extremely hostile contacts appearing without warning and violently killing off or abducting many members of the mining crew we had operating over there. Your mission is to secure the area, defend any survivors, and try to locate and rescue any hostages you come across. An optional secondary endeavor is to round up any shipments of needler crystals to appropriate for intergalactic transport. Logically, you can use any needler crystals you come across as a natural source of ammunition for their respective type of weaponry. Any questions?" he reports.

"Yes sir, I've a quick question for you," Sammy retorts. "Alright then, shoot," Commander Djima approves. "Exactly what _kind_ of enemy is this?" Sammy asks him earnestly. "I'm not completely sure, but based on most of the reports I've been receiving, it's most likely a type of enemy that our forces are dearly unfamiliar with. They also describe the enemies attacking in massive waves of forces at a time, rushing their positions without the slightest hesitation, and literally drowning our workers in a veritable torrent of bodies and blood until you can't handle it anymore. Then, I'd assume, is when you die, or get captured alive for God knows what reason at the very least," the commander explains to him. Sammy gulps and shudders a bit after hearing that kind of description, for it is almost exactly the same description he would give those creepy enemies in his nightmare. "Why do you ask Sam? It's not like you're afraid of these enemies, are you?" Commander Djima inquires. "Who, me? Afraid? Bah, I'm not afraid at all! Just a little nervous about fighting a new brand of deadly enemies that could take and torture hostages at will to who-knows-what end, that's all," Sammy remarks candidly. "I see. Any other questions squad?" the commander queries. "Uh… Mr. Commander Elite sir, what do we do if the enemy captures one of us and we're still alive and able to communicate with the rest of the squad?" the gunner grunt asks coyly. "If that happens, then be sure to explain the situation to your squad as calmly and concisely as possible. The better you do so, the quicker they can locate and extract you from the enemy's evil clutches," Commander Djima advises him. "Okay sir, I'll try!" the grunt assures his supreme commander. "One final note everyone: remember that deep inside each of you, your wild warrior's heart is calling, so when you don't know what to do in the heat of the moment, just clear your mind and _listen_! Good luck squad!" the commander ecstatically encourages them. As the room clears out and the squad prepares to armor up and get ready to go, Sammy can't help but repeatedly whisper to himself, "Listen to your wild warrior's heart!"


	3. Cleared for Takeoff

**_Chapter II: Cleared for Takeoff_**

Arriving back in his personal quarters, Sammy hastily swaps out his nice clothes for some comparably cruder ones (save for his special chain) and armors up in his signature champion skirmisher armor. Unlike standard champion skirmisher armor, Sammy's position within his Covenant faction had earned him the right to enhance his armor with up to one hour of continuous rechargeable active camouflage and multiple bars of standard rechargeable energy shielding, twenty-one to be exact—a record for any known skirmisher in Covenant history to ever possess. A "bar" was the common nomenclatural term used to designate the amount of shielding represented by a single full rectangular bar in one's neural interface HUD (which, when active, featured a built-in reticule, radar/motion tracker, and ammo count tracker, among other things). Each bar was represented by a slightly different shade of a particular color, and as one's shielding was steadily depleted, the bar's color would get noticeably lighter and more transparent until it was completely empty. As it recharged, the bar's appearance would recover rapidly to its original tone until the shield's strength reached 100%, in which case it would appear to be entirely opaque once again. Weapon strength was often explained in terms of bars of shielding too. If a soldier memorized the amount of damage a specific weapon-based attack would deal out to his shielding, he could decide accordingly whether to seriously consider avoiding the attack outright or to simply shrug it off and take the hit. For instance, a single overcharged shot from a plasma pistol would deplete approximately half a bar, a beam rifle shot one and a quarter bars, and a direct hit from a fuel rod cannon three full bars of shielding (but as low as four fifths of a bar if merely indirect). Keeping track of these kinds of statistics out in the field could prove to be invaluable, and Sammy knew every one of them to the letter from memory.

Next, Sammy headed for the ship's armory to stock up on the necessary armaments for his upcoming mission. The onboard armory of the _Celestial Asceticism_ was as sophisticated as any other standard Covenant cruiser's, but hers also possessed one strikingly unique feature that stood out in stark contrast to the rest—an ordnance teleporter. Similar to the technology that UNSC vessels like the _Infinity_ use to hot-drop weapons and equipment onto the battlefield, the _Celestial_ 's variant of the concept involves using innovative Covenant-exclusive short-range teleportation technology to transport anything to and from the ship itself, and not just weapons, but also vehicles, machinery, mine hovercarts full of needler crystal deposits, and even personnel if the situation entails it. This negates the need for older technology like gravity lifts to accomplish similar tasks. For this mission, that particular technology could prove to be invaluable. Once in the armory, Sammy observes the many members of his squad milling about collecting the necessary munitions and other gear befitting their appropriate rank and status within the squad. "Let's see here…I'm definitely bringing a beam rifle and at least one spare battery for it," he thinks to himself as he snatches a hypercube (which is essentially an exceedingly high-tech futuristic mass storage device that the user typically stores in a small pouch attached to their lower armor section) from a small crate and proceeds to browse aisle after aisle of weapons securing exactly the items he needs for his latest mission.

In total, his final inventory ends up looking precisely as such: one anti-air wraith, one wraith, one revenant, one banshee, one spectre, one ghost, one plasma mortar ball turret, one fuel rod ball turret, one stationary gun, one large portable plasma cannon, one fully loaded fuel rod cannon, twenty spare clips of fuel rod cannon ammunition, one 500%-charged beam rifle, one spare 500%-charged beam rifle battery pack, one beam rifle battery pack recharger, one 500%-charged focus rifle, one spare 500%-charged focus rifle battery pack, one focus rifle battery pack recharger, one fully loaded needle rifle, one fully loaded needler, forty needler crystals, one 500%-charged plasma repeater, one plasma repeater battery pack recharger, one spare 500%-charged plasma repeater battery pack, one powerblade (the Covenant equivalent of a combat knife, which is basically a handheld miniature energy sword, but with virtually infinite battery power courtesy of its considerably lower overall power output), twenty-five incendiary grenades, fifty spike grenades, one hundred plasma grenades, four auto-turrets, five power drains, fifteen flares, five radar jammers, fifteen bubble shields, five regenerators, one sixty-second duration invincibility generator, one jetpack, one hologram projector, one Kig-yar sniping eyepiece, two Kig-yar personal defense gauntlets, and five instant healing health packs, all stored in the one hypercube itself. "Ready to roll!" he proudly exclaims out loud before making his way to the main onboard dropship hangar.

In the hangar, Sammy takes a quick roll call for each of his one hundred lesser squadmates, and satisfied with everyone's attendance, he promptly boards his phantom. "Is everybody ready to go?" he asks his numerous squadmates via open Covenant comm channel. "Yes sir Commander Skirmisher!" his units respond in perfect unison. "All right then, Commander Djima, we're all ready to go. Are we cleared for takeoff?" he radios in. "Indeed, you are. Once more, good luck team!" Djima reassures them. With liftoff clearance granted, Sammy's phantom and four others immediately leave the cruiser and fly towards their preliminary journey's end—the needler crystal mining planetoid, officially designated CV-626. On the way there, he strikes up a short conversation with that same gunner grunt he sat next to back during the boardroom debriefing session. "Commander, if you don't mind my asking, are you really scared of facing this new enemy or is it just me?" the grunt questions him curiously. "Like I said before, I'm not scared, just worried and slightly on edge, that's all. Understood?" Sammy informs him sternly. "Okay sir, sorry for pestering you with that again," the grunt replies. Sighing, Sammy admits, "Well, to be truthful here, yes, I may be a little bit scared deep down, but only of dying, not of the enemies themselves. Besides, how can I honestly be afraid of something when I'm not even sure what it looks like yet?" "Huh, you make a good point there. I guess we'll just have to find out the old-fashioned way, won't we?" the grunt agrees apprehensively. "Yep, we're gonna have to," Sammy remarks. After a while of waiting and wondering, he peers out the front window of the phantom and stares out across the empty space ahead of him and at the majestic sight that is Installation 06. He can just now barely make out the form of the target planetoid as a tiny silvery-gray dot on the horizon right above the outer rim of halo number six. "Attention squad. We should arrive at our destination in T-minus five minutes," the jackal piloting Sammy's phantom alerts all five dropships simultaneously. Sure enough, roughly five minutes later, the phantoms enter the planetoid's tiny atmosphere and ultimately touch down in a large clearing a small distance away from the main entrance to the mines. "Let's go people. Time to rock and roll!" Sammy shouts exuberantly as he and the rest of his hundred-person squad head out onto the planetoid's rugged surface and towards the chief tunnel opening of the mineshafts.


	4. They're Coming

**_Chapter III: They're Coming_**

Creeping into the main tunnel entrance, Sammy and his squad realize straightaway the sheer grandeur of the cavernousness inherent in the mine's subterranean topography. One could see at least a good ten thousand feet ahead of and at least another good three thousand feet above one's current position just beyond the mouth of the tunnel alone. Protruding out of a decent portion of the walls as well as some of the ceiling and floor, a seemingly innumerable number of uncut needler crystals could be seen, illuminating the entire cave with a faint pinkish glow of mystique and wonderment unlike almost anything most of Sammy's squad, himself included, had ever laid eyes upon before. Covering all their tactical bases, Sammy ensures that every corner of the shaft is scrutinized thoroughly for any telltale signs of hostile contact. "All clear here," a murmillo skirmisher informs Sammy. "Good, good, just keep checking the corners and such per standard investigatory protocol," Sammy guides him along. A few minutes later, a few fleeing miners approach the squad. "Please, help us, they're coming, THEY'RE COMING!" a startled grunt squeals in terror. "They were right behind us not too long ago a ways back!" an equally petrified jackal cries. "Wait, who's coming and where're they coming from?" Sammy accosts him sharply. "They were right behind us a ways back, but then they turned around a went the other way! I don't know why but I don't care and I just wanna get the _heck_ out of here! WAH!" the grunt screams out in panic before fleeing toward the main tunnel's opening with his fellow miners.

"Well, there goes one badly traumatized grunt. Squad, we're going in, so be sure to cover your flanks and be on the lookout for an ambush to spring up at any given moment!" Sammy directs his team. Clutching his beam rifle closely against his breast, he comes across a much narrower corridor veering off to the right from the main shaft—the same one the miners had fled from only moments before. One by one, groups of five troops at a time follow behind their trusty skirmisher superior as he leads them cautiously down the new passage. Checking his HUD every step of the way, Sammy fails to notice even the slightest blip on his motion tracker. Normally, if hostile signatures were detected by the tracker, they'd be denoted by a bright red dot directly proportionate to the relative size and distance of the target(s) in question; allies would appear as a bright yellow color by the same token. However, unknown or questionable entities would initially appear as white dots until their true motives were made definitively apparent to the tracker's owner. That is primarily what Sammy was looking for at first due to the enemy's innate peculiarity, and being the only one on the squad deemed fit enough to utilize a motion tracker by his Covenant leadership, it was crucially important for him to pay continual attention to it at regular intervals, even prior to enemy contact being officially established. If hostiles were detected, he could warn his squad of the impending danger almost instantaneously so his whole unit could prepare to respond accordingly.

"BEEP!" his motion tracker resonates unexpectedly. Without a second though, Sammy freezes as he feels an adrenaline rush course throughout his body all at once. The cause for alarm? A single, small white dot on the very edge of his tracker's range. Ostensibly, the contact was approximately one hundred meters to his eleven o'clock position, and was blipping in and out of range for a bit before finally disappearing altogether. After pausing to notify his squad of the potential threat, he gradually follows the path until the tunnel opens up again, yet not nearly as large as the main shaft did. Needler crystals were particularly abundant in this section of the mines, and some were already cut and lying in mine hovercarts, fully prepared for transport to the _Celestial_. "Collect any needler crystals you wish to acquiesce and move on, although I want a few squadmates to stay behind and prep this cargo for transport back to the _Celestial_. You can join up with us again later. Any volunteers?" Sammy proclaims. A minor skirmisher, minor jackal, and two minor grunts step up and decide to take care of the hovercarts while he and the rest of the squad move further down the shaft following the left wall closely, when… "BEEP!" the motion tracker sounds again. This time, a slew of small white dots appear near the edge of the tracker's range, but unlike last time, they actually begin to move _toward_ Sammy's location. "Get ready for anything guys. We've got trouble!" he tells his team before taking point farther on ahead of his squad about fifty feet or so. Inching ever so slowly forward toward the unknown signatures, he gets within seventy-five meters of his targets before once again, they take off the other direction, and after a brief moment, they're outside his tracker's range. To him, it was almost as if these strange entities knew of his squad's presence and were intentionally enticing both him and, consequently, his squad to descend deeper and deeper into the mines. "Huh, that's pretty odd," he whispers to himself before falling back slightly to his squad once more.

After a few more minutes of traveling, the shaft narrows again considerably before forking into two separate passageways, one heading due right, and the other heading due left. Suspecting the very real possibility of an ambush in the near future, Sammy partitions off a dozen members of his squad to stay behind and hold their position just before shaft forks. "Be sure to set up a defensive perimeter with plenty of turret firepower and shield defenses to bear," he orders them. "Sure thing sir!" an obedient lesser skirmisher confirms his commands as he sets up a stationary gun and a couple portable energy shields for himself. Following the more brightly lit right tunnel around fifteen meters, the squad makes a rather gruesome discovery: a few dead grunts, a couple dead jackals, and a dead elite, all former miners, lie strewn all around the tunnel floor ahead of them in small pools of blood. "Ew, how much grosser can it get?" Sammy's gunner grunt companion comments. Shaking his head, Sammy reacts, "Well, there's nothing more that can be done for them now, but look! That elite's chest looks like it's been chewed open by something vicious. The same for those two jackals too." Once he makes sure that there are no farther signs of hostiles in the immediate area, he gives the cue to press onward. In the next tunnel section, an insane amount of blood has been smeared all over the floor and along the walls, blue and purple alike, but surprisingly enough, there are no bodies to be found. With things now starting to really get hairy, Sammy reports the horrendous sighting to the rest of his squad throughout the entire cave network over their open comm channel and readies his squad to expect combat any second now. Moving past the bloodstained tunnel segment, he and his squad enter a larger yet still somewhat cramped passage that ends up being a dead end, as the path ahead is blocked off by what seems to have been a sudden cave-in of rocks and debris. "Great, a dead end. Looks like we'll be heading back to our previous position," Sammy reveals. To him, something was not quite right—he could have sworn those unknown signatures were retreating to somewhere in the vicinity. "Oh well, while we have to traverse those bloody tunnels again, at least we won't have to end up fighting any enemies here!" the gunner grunt states, a slight smirk forming behind his methane mask. Unfortunately for them though, as it turns out, that little grunt spoke way too soon…!


	5. Let's Rock

**_Chapter IV: Let's Rock_**

"BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!" the motion tracker abruptly chimes over and over again, almost all at once. "Contacts!" Sammy blurts out as he frantically swaps out his beam rifle for his plasma repeater and looks around everywhere for the anonymous entities. After looking in every possible lateral direction, he checks the one place he failed to consider earlier—the ceiling. Sure enough, a whole swarm of pernicious critters pours down from above, crawling every which way and attempting to leap upon their would-be victims of Sammy's squad. "LET'S ROCK!" Sammy yells out before he and all his nearby allies open fire on the creatures simultaneously. Several seconds later, and all the creatures are destroyed, with whatever remains of them lying strewn about all across the tunnel floor. "What the heck _were_ those things Commander?" a surprised major jackal questions him. "I don't know, but they're just like these creatures I had in a horrifying nightmare last night. Oh no, here come more of them!" Sammy replies as another huge swarm of contacts appears on his motion tracker from the same angle as before, this time in a bright red color since they have now officially been designated as hostiles. This time, save for a momentary five-second lull, they cease to stop coming for almost an entire minute, and in all the chaos, a minor jackal has his left leg badly torn up by one of the nasty vermin. In between waves, Sammy has just enough time to heal his injured squadmate before the next set of beasties arrives.

After fighting off yet another group of enemies shortly after the previous one ended, Sammy receives a portentous distress call from the twelve-count subunit he left back near the fork in the shaft. "Commander, we're getting attacked on all sides by an unclassified enemy force, and we're tearing 'em up really badly, but they just keep coming! We'll hold out as long as we can! Oh no, Major! Repeat, our major skirmisher has just been taken down by one of these… _things_ , and now…oh no, HELP! AGH!" the murmillo skirmisher assigned to the aforementioned forked tunnel post screams out over the comm channel. Then, several seconds of static followed by an eerily dead silence comes immediately after his message ends. "Murmillo, are you there? Do you copy, over?" Sammy hysterically radios back to him. No answer. "Squad, we're falling back to the fork in the path we encountered earlier and retreating back to the tunnel entrance if at all possible. Now let's move out!" Sammy commands his troops as they begin to back up to that previous point in the passage. While they proceed in doing so, Sammy, the gunner grunt, and a few others bringing up the rear guard continue annihilating bad guys as they appear from the dead-end tunnel. "Commander, look!" the jackal sharpshooter taking point alerts him. Quickly making his way to the front of the pack, Sammy eyes the sight ahead of him with shocking fascination—the previously dead bodies lying along the floor of the tunnel earlier are entered by one each of the creatures first seen only moments before, and after a fairly short period of convulsing and squirming in place, the now-reanimated bodies rise to their feet and… _attack_! After quickly putting them down again, Sammy checks the bodies closely before drawing the conclusion they are truly dead once more. "Okay, THAT was weird!" a minor skirmisher points out. "Agreed. Let's be sure to keep an eye on that kind of stuff happening again so we can try to prevent it at all costs, all right? Also, make sure to stow the bodies of any fallen comrades and miners in a hypercube from now on so they can't be used against us later by the enemy and so that their families can receive a body back to identify and prepare for a decent funeral," Sammy advises everyone before leading the squad back to the fork in the shaft, where a battle is still raging between the subunit's survivors and the viciously vile vermin. Once they fight off the remaining enemies and any more that come after them for several more minutes from both directions with minimal casualties, Sammy has several higher-ranking squadmates recover any intact weaponry, artillery, and equipment before taking the left route in the fork.

Pressing on steadily for the next several dozen meters, the path ever-so-slowly begins to widen again. The squad then comes upon a couple more miners running away from a small cluster of the evil creatures. After making short work of them, they console the miners and arm them with a reasonably charged plasma pistol each before proceeding. Thirty more seconds of traveling finds the squad entering a much larger cavern greater than any yet seen second only to the original one near the entrance of the mines. Ahead of them, the ground remains fairly flat for the next few hundred meters before sloping down gently for the remainder of the cave's several thousand meter breadth, while above them, the ceiling extends upward at least a good quarter mile; additionally, uncut needler crystals litter the area more abundantly than anywhere previously seen. Seeing no better opportunity worth seizing arising again anytime soon, Sammy instructs all those in his squad with vehicles to use them as efficiently as possible and carefully escort those forced to walk toward the series of smaller passages on the far side of the cavern. Then, after bringing out and climbing into his banshee, Sammy boosts far ahead of the majority of his squad and scouts the opposite side of the cave. "All clear," he relays back to his team.

Nonetheless, a few moments later, the silence is shattered by the presence of a sizeable group of enemies appearing from a series of small crevices along the sides of the cavern, consisting of more of the same creepy-crawlies, reanimated Covenant corpses (some even armed with stolen power tools and weapons, including an ex-brute with a gravity hammer), and a new threat—large bulbous creatures vaguely resembling ex-grunts that waddle around the combat zone seemingly looking for a close-range target to engage. "Where the heck did it get that from?" a minor jackal remarks. "I don't know, but don't fret, I've got a fuel rod blast with its name on it," Sammy reassures him as he blows away a nicely sized chunk of enemy forces with a single shot of his banshee's onboard fuel rod cannon. "Any idea what we can start calling these things?" his second-in-command, a veteran commando skirmisher, inquires. "I've been thinking about the same thing, and I've decided on the following temporary nicknames, for I'm sure there must be some proper name for them somewhere out there: the small creatures I call 'fleas' as their primary form of attack is to jump upon their victims, the reanimated bodies I call 'zombies' for obvious reasons, and the newer bloated creatures I've recently decided to call 'fleabags' since they apparently release more fleas upon expiring," Sammy informs them before wiping out another series of fleas and zombies with his banshee's twin plasma cannons.

Suddenly, a crowd of enemies larger and more diverse than any seen before erupts from a side shaft on the cave's western edge, including an ex-grunt with a plasma launcher, an ex-jackal with a focus rifle, an ex-elite with dual energy swords, an ex-brute with a large power drill, and even a couple of zombies piloting locusts. "Take out those cursed locusts now!" the commando skirmisher barks as a friendly ghost explodes from concentrated fire from said locusts. "I'm on it!" Sammy answers before taking care of those despicable locusts for good, but not before they take down another allied ghost and even an allied banshee. Upon noticing the plasma launcher-wielding zombie, Sammy heads straight for it, barrel roll-dodges the incoming volley of plasma grenades, and takes him down swiftly with a torrent of plasma. "The mining machinery and locusts I can understand, but where did they ever find these other weapons?" Sammy ponders. " _Wraith_! _Banshee_! _Sniper_!" he suddenly hears almost simultaneously over the comm channel. Undoubtedly, a zombie-occupied wraith as well as its onboard gunner comes lumbering out of the same side shaft escorted by a few enemy ghosts, flanked by a pair of enemy spectres, and followed by an enemy banshee flying overhead, another locust, a huge swarm of several hundred fleas, a dozen fleabags, and a large number of zombies of many various Covenant types, one of which is an ex-skirmisher with a beam rifle that strongly prefers to hang back and snipe from range. "All demolition units, focus all heavy firepower on that wraith until it goes down! Snipers, counter snipe that enemy sniper A.S.A.P.! I'll take out the banshee," Sammy commands before doing just that. In the process of doing so though, he takes a decent amount of return fire, weakening his banshee slightly but not dealing a significant amount of damage to it, allowing for him to remain airborne. As the battle progresses, most of the enemies are eliminated, but Sammy's squad also incurs their fair share of casualties, including multiple grunts, several jackals, and a few skirmishers, as well as the loss of a couple ghosts and a spectre. "We're about halfway across the cave now!" a spec ops grunt mentions enthusiastically. "Perhaps, but keep it up squad, I think they're almost all gone!" Sammy notes. Once the last enemy falls, the cavern is imbued with a near-quietness that is received as quite pleasing to the ears of all those in Sammy's squad. "Is…is it over?" the gunner grunt asks hopefully. "I think so, but only for now. Stay sharp squad!" Sammy replies. Nevertheless, it stays calm long enough for the entire squad to make it all the way across to the other side of the cavern.

Dismounting and putting away all their vehicles once again, Sammy decides to relinquish his standard wraith, his revenant, and his spectre, both his ball turrets, and his stationary gun to a few trustworthy squadmates before moving on, since he still had a few other vehicles and weapons remaining that, in his mind, were superior. Besides, they would most likely need them later much more than he would. There are three new small tunnels to choose to travel through, but after scanning the interiors of the left and right tunnels, both tunnels are found to be rendered completely impassable. The interior of the center tunnel, by contrast, is very much clear as far as the eye can see before it curves out of sight a distant fifty meters away. Taking point as usual, Sammy makes sure the way ahead is devoid of any enemy contact, and once that goal has been attained by killing off a few stray fleas here and there, he and his squad make their way through the tunnel about sixty-five meters before running into a dangerous new potential threat—the tunnel links up with a short chasm section where the floor narrows to a mere five feet wide with a deep abyss on either side of the main path, forming a sort of bridge that the squad must cross in order to proceed with their mission. The bridge itself might be five feet wide at the top, but it gets even thinner almost immediately below, down to no more than a foot or so, making the crossing a rather precarious one indeed.

Taking the situation very seriously, Sammy removes his jetpack from his hypercube and attaches it. "Let's be exceedingly careful here, cross only in pairs, and take things slow until reaching the other side," he cautions his squad before exhibiting the same behavior himself while crossing the stony bridge accordingly. Seeing this as a golden opportunity to also recount his troops, he does so as the first pair of squadmates crosses to the other side, then the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, etc. However, once the final pair is attempting to cross the bridge safely, Sammy's motion tracker blips abruptly as a suicidal ex-grunt zombie comes rushing up from behind, and before anyone can even react, it self-destructs itself with a couple of plasma grenades only thirteen feet away, causing the fragile bridge to begin crumbling beneath their feet. Stunned from such a close range explosion, the final crossing pair starts to slip into the dark depths below them when Sammy instantly jumps into the gap surrounding the bridge and, using his jetpack, hovers over to the first squadmate, a jackal sniper, grabs his paw with his own, and begins to lift him up to the cliff edge above. Once the incredibly grateful jackal has a good hold of the ledge and can pull himself up from there, Sammy repeats the same series of actions for the other squadmate, a minor grunt, but unfortunately, in the process of doing so, a large chunk of the disintegrating bridge falls on top of the grunt's head, knocking him out and loosening Sammy's grip on him to the point where he slips out of Sammy's grasp entirely and falls into the seemingly bottomless pit below. "NO!" Sammy yells out loudly before reluctantly coming to terms with the unexpected loss and landing back inside the squad-side tunnel section.

"Darn it, and I almost had him too! Grrrr…I suppose we'll have to continue onward, now with a squad numbering only fifty-five, and that's including these two," he growls before pointing at the two rescued miners. "Aw, don't feel glum Commander! You tried your best to save him, and if that's not honorable enough by itself, I don't know what it!" the gunner grunt comforts him. "I suppose you're right. Now then, shall we?" Sammy responds poignantly before resuming leading his squad through the tunnel as usual. Farther down the tunnel a ways, the path splits up again, but there is also a metal sign drilled into the wall this time around. According to the sign, the left-hand passage leads them to the underground employee lounge, while the right-hand one takes them to an underground elevator shaft. "Heh, this looks like a pretty obvious choice, does it not?" the gunner grunt chimes. "Yes, it does. Squad, we're heading back to the surface and out of these mines to a predetermined evac point for extraction. I think we've all seen more than our fair share of terror today, wouldn't you all agree?" Sammy asks his squad as they all respond back unanimously with a resounding "YES!" On the way to the elevators, Sammy notices a few enemies appear on his motion tracker. "Great, more bogeys. Get ready!" he forewarns his troops before rounding a tight corner and engaging a small squad of well-armed zombies. Although a couple more squadmates were lost in the ensuing melee, both lower-ranking grunts, the squad was able to recover some much-needed ammunition for some rarer ordnance, such as concussion rifles and Covenant carbines. Just beyond that point, the elevators were in plain sight. "Hustle people, let's go!" Sammy prods his squad on as they rapidly approach the elevators with much anticipation.


	6. Lone Skirmisher

**_Chapter V: Lone Skirmisher_**

At the end of their current tunnel, three large elevators lie. The center elevator is labeled as "out of service" by a small metallic sign, while the leftmost and rightmost elevators are both still in service. "Squad, it looks like we're splitting up for now. Commando, you take the higher-ranking half and the two miners. The rest of you, come with me. We'll meet up again somewhere back up on the surface. Good luck team," Sammy explains as he and his group climbs onto the right elevator while the Commando and the others take the left. "Good luck too Commander!" the gunner grunt tells him gleefully. Sammy cannot help but smile back at him before nodding approvingly and hitting his elevator's corresponding holoswitch. As both elevators initiate their synchronized ascent, he hears a slight creaking sound grow louder and louder until… _SCREECH_! His elevator suddenly grinds to a halt while the other one continues its excursion upward. "What the heck? Why'd we stop?" he remarks before pressing the holoswitch a few more times, but to no avail. Sighing, he moves over to check the metal suspension cords of the elevator car, but as he does, the elevator begins moving again… downward! "Oh no, hold on everyone! We're going down, and in a free-fall too!" he shouts out before clasping a metal beam comprising the elevator's external frame with his paws and riding the elevator down most of the way. Near what he perceives as being the bottom, he prepares himself and jetpacks a split second before the car crashes to the ground, allowing him to completely avoid receiving the massive jolt from landing. Sadly, the same cannot be said of his group of squadmates, all of which seemed to have each sustained a lethal vertebral snapping of the neck upon reaching the floor of the elevator shaft. After pausing for a couple minutes to verify that his worst fears came true, Sammy shakes his head, sniffles slightly, and admits to himself, "Well, at least their deaths were all instant and painless. Looks like whether I like it or not, I'm a lone skirmisher from here on out." After radioing the intact half of his squad with the bad news of their squadmates' demises and the good news of his unscathed survival, he takes each of the bodies and any spare weapons, ammunition, and equipment lying about and stows it all away in his hypercube prior to jogging down his new path a bit until picking up a few mobile hostiles on his motion tracker.

Peering around the corner, he sees a few unarmed zombies roaming around the tunnel aimlessly, while a little past them, a good dozen or so fleas scurry about every which way. Playing it smart, he chucks a perfectly thrown plasma grenade right in between the zombies and blows them all to whence they came. "Nice throw you lucky boy!" he muses, his face momentarily lighting up with one satisfied smirk. Compared to the zombies, the fleas were virtually effortless to eliminate—a quick burst of superheated plasma was all it took to gladly remove them from their existence. Another brisk walk shortly thereafter finds Sammy stumbling upon a couple fleabags and another assemblage of fleas, this one much larger than the preceding one. Thinking deftly, he fills the nearer fleabag with a clip's worth of needles from his needler, causing it to rupture violently and detonate the other fleabag in a similar blast, eliminating most of the fleas emerging from them before they even have the chance to react. As for the remaining fleas, he removes them all with another carefully aimed plasma grenade toss from a safe distance. Beyond that point in the tunnel lie forty more skirmisher-sized paces of empty space before the next group of abominable antagonists presents itself. Taking them all down with needle rifle-induced supercombines and sustained plasma repeater fire, Sammy begins to notice a pattern in his strategy with these creatures: for fleas, the plasma repeater and needler are his best bet, and for zombies and fleabags, needle-based weaponry, explosives, and presumably precision weaponry work best, most preferably from sufficient range. The next tunnel section remains relatively clear save for the occasional flea or unarmed zombie that pose little to no threat to him, but as for the one after that, he faces a major potential threat in the form of several ex-elites wielding energy swords and a couple ex-brutes with gravity hammers. Activating his active camouflage, he stealthily creeps up on the zombies and takes them all down with close-range spike grenade tosses before they even understand what happened. The tunnel remains mostly clear beyond that point save for the infrequent flea cluster or fleabag encounter.

After leaving the current tunnel, Sammy finds himself in another large open area of the mines that appears to be the remnants of an abandoned mine hovercart station. From the upper floor of the empty station's main building to a smaller watchtower-like structure on the opposite side, a large catwalk spans the area. All around the main area, a ton of the virulent creatures shuffle to and fro aimlessly, just looking for something to tear up. On the brighter side of things, the majority of the zombies here are unarmed, and of the few that are not, all but one carried standard Covenant small-arms, with the only notable exception being a particularly restless ex-brute wandering around brandishing a fuel rod cannon. Seeing that the catwalk's vantage point represents far too good a tactical advantage to a capable marksman, he decides to reactivate his active camouflage and climb the stairs leading up to the top of the nearby watchtower as briskly as he can. Once at the top, he runs out onto the middle of the catwalk, whips out his beam rifle, and begins going to town on the enemy forces in the area one by one. Fortunately, it does not take very long for him to discover that nailing these bizarre foes in the head does not kill them, even if their head becomes completely dislodged. However, if he hits shoots them in the upper chest where the occupying flea resides inside a zombie's body, it quells both the flea and the zombie together in a single blow. Starting with the fuel rod cannon-toting brute zombie, he proceeds in sniping most of the local enemy population before any of them can figure out where they are being fired upon from.

Once only a handful of them remain, Sammy covers the watchtower stairway's base to prevent any of them from getting too close for comfort. Once he is absolutely certain that no more enemies remain, he deliberates which side to descend on when a large garage-like metal door on the spacious cavern's western fall opens without warning, releasing a pair of enemy wraiths, an enemy spectre, and at least ten enemy ghosts. Going over his options prudently, he decides to hover up near the cave's tall ceiling with his jetpack and snipe all the vehicles' exposed drivers, passengers, and gunners with his beam rifle—a task that ends up taking nearly ten minutes to pull off proficiently. Once they are all gone, he swaps his current weapon out for the fuel rod cannon and bathes each of the wraiths in a full clip of fuel rods from above, destroying both vehicles and their drivers outright; following that, he lands back onto the floor of the cave, recovers each stolen ghost and the spectre, and stores them away in his hypercube for safekeeping before contacting his squad to check on their progress. "Squad, do you copy, over," he exclaims over the comm channel. "We hear ya Commander, and we're making superb progress toward the nearest exit, which is apparently another several thousand meters or so away. We'll standby and keep you posted as we go along if anything unfortunate should happen along the way or we reach the exit, whichever comes first," the commando skirmisher relays back to him. "Great to hear brother! Any casualties to report?" Sammy asks. "No, not yet, as there've been surprisingly few enemies in the tunnels we've traveled through thus far. How are things over on your end?" the commando says. "Pretty crowded with enemies if I do say so myself—I just finished taking down two wraiths with my fuel rod cannon! No injuries yet though. In fact, I haven't even been hit by a single attack and hardly any enemies have even noticed my lethal handiwork," Sammy responds. "I see…well, take care for now sir. Commando out," the commando skirmisher tells him. Sammy then disengages his cloaking, reviews his supply inventory, and searches around for the next passage until eventually locating it and heading into the shaft for himself.

The next tunnel is totally barren of hostiles for its entire length, and after trekking on for what seemed like forever, Sammy comes across a rather intimidating sight—the entire conjoining shaft is loaded with enemies of all types! Culminating in the forms of an enemy-occupied locust and an ex-skirmisher with a beam rifle, he decides to fall back to the previous tunnel and let the enemies funnel in at him. After reengaging his camo and firing a few potshots with his plasma repeater to get their undivided attention, the horde immediately starts flooding Sammy's tunnel in an enraged fury, to which he responds with plasma grenade after plasma grenade interspersed only by the intermittent fuel rod barrage. Several minutes later, the enemies finally stop coming, but at a distinct price, for in the preceding melee, he expended most of his plasma grenades and several clips of fuel rod cannon ammunition. As he prepares to leave the tunnel, a massive bevy of fleas followed by a substantial number of fleabags emerges from the opposing corridor. Sammy's reaction? Another series of hurled plasma grenades followed by nearly a quarter battery's worth of plasma repeater fire. Moving on from here, the next tunnel is clear until near the very end of it, where an enemy ghost and a few unarmed zombies and isolated fleabags lurk. Since the shafts seem to be getting steadily larger, he opts to get out and pilot his favorite toy, the anti-air wraith. Hovering down the tunnel in his vehicle at roughly twenty-five miles per hour, Sammy blows away any enemy that dares present itself with his vastly superior firepower.

In the next cavern, there are quite a few needler crystals dotting the landscape as well as half a dozen cut needler crystal-filled mine hovercarts. For enemies, there is a formidable force of an enemy-piloted AA wraith, several locusts, and many well-armed zombies in addition to another vast swarm of fleas and around a dozen fleabags to deal with. In short, plenty of targets to unleash upon with an incessantly indefinite bombardment of fuel rods from his AA wraith. Once the area is secure, he dismounts the barely-scathed wraith, collects any intact ammunition, stows the hovercarts full of needler crystals in his hypercube, and remounts his tank once again before continuing his fuel rod-infused rampage into the next series of subterranean passages, moving mostly uphill now. The subsequent area is a massive cave similar to the one he and his troops traversed earlier in the mission. Once all the nearby enemies are defeated, he trades his AA wraith out for his partially-damaged banshee and flies around the entire cave removing each and every enemy threat there is. After that, he notices a distant ledge leading to a high up mineshaft he had failed to notice beforehand and soars across the cave until landing on said ledge, exiting the banshee, putting it away, and moving up the new marginally sloped tunnel.

With the corridor being more-than-wide enough for a ghost to comfortably flit through and the path ahead being fairly straight, Sammy gets his out, enters it, and floors the engine until reaching the optimal speed of one hundred mph. He cruises along the tunnel at this pace for two minutes straight. Interestingly, no enemies are in this particular tunnel. Following this tunnel leads him to a bigger shaft with quite an unusual sight to behold—astoundingly, a veritable Covenant armory is set up, with crate after crate of weapons and several rows of vehicles lining the walls of both the cave itself and a small building in the center of the room. "So _this_ is where these things got all those weapons and vehicles earlier on. Even still though, how did all this stuff get down here to begin with? There weren't any soldiers stationed here," Sammy thinks. After taking a brief moment to park his ghost at the mouth of the smaller shaft, Sammy turns on his camo again and examines the situation presented to him. There are at least a good hundred zombies of all species, several dozen fleabags, and probably well over a thousand fleas in this cavern. A methodical approach seemed the best way to handle this area, so he took a minute to formulate a plan of action before initiating it on his unsuspecting victims. First, he snipes as many zombies as he can before too many enemies begin closing in. Next, once the elements of surprise and range have been lost, he sticks as many approaching zombies and fleabags with plasma and/or spike grenades as he can and falls back a ways firing his needler and plasma repeater on them in a dual-wield configuration. Then, he jetpacks as high up as he can, hovers at a fixed height, and unloads his fuel rod cannon and a couple power drains on any recently commandeered vehicles driving around. Lastly, being down to only a handful of unarmed zombies, fleabags, and the huge group of fleas, he employs efficient use of his needle rifle and plasma repeater on them, nearly draining his plasma repeater battery outright. Twenty minutes elapse by the time the final enemy is erased. "Wow, now THAT was a lot of enemies! Still nothing too great for me to handle," Sammy tells himself smugly before deactivating his camo, placing all the salvageable weapons and vehicles inside the cave into his hypercube, and advancing toward the small central structure.

All of a sudden, a few contacts appear on his motion tracker that weren't there before. Sure enough, emerging from a door at the front of the building, a couple ex-brute zombies equipped with brute shots and a miner hostage make their way toward Sammy before stopping and facing him at pointblank range. "No, don't shoot!" the elite hostage screams just as Sammy was raising his needle rifle. Startled by the elite's request, Sammy stares at him resentfully for a second before one of the zombies snarls something unintelligible at the elite. "What'd he say?" Sammy inquires. "He says that your Flood killing spree ends here and that today shall be your last day alive Commander Sim!" the elite replies as he begins laughing hysterically. "You see…they captured me, but didn't infect or kill me if I offered them this plethora of stolen weapons and my technical skills in exchange, the latter which I developed greatly as an ex-senior weaponologist for our faction's weapon research division prior to my being dismissed for my controversial research and my eventual becoming a miner. Out of fear for my life and a chance at revenge for being fired all those years ago, I just finished rigging a makeshift nuclear bomb I built for these Flood upon being given the necessary materials, and even better, it's set to explode in just under six minutes!" he adds as he resumes laughing. "Wait… _Flood_? That's what they're called? And I can't believe you betrayed your own Covenant faction like that! You know what you are? You're a pathetically treacherous COWARD!" Sammy shouts at him, his teeth now fully bared. "Goodbye Commander! I hope you enjoyed your stay in the needler crystal mines of CV-626! _HA HA HA HA HA HA_!" the elite yells out in an unforgiving tone of borderline insanity.

Wasting no more time, Sammy fires a round into one of the Flood creatures and is amazed to see that it actually has functioning energy shields of its own. He dodges a sudden counterattack by the creatures via jetpacking into the air a bit and throwing an incendiary grenade on each of them, stripping their shields and burning them to death in seconds. As Sammy attempts to retreat back to his ghost, the elite produces a plasma launcher from a hidden hypercube of his own and fires on Sammy with it; Sammy reacts by throwing a flare and a radar jammer (in case he had a functioning motion tracker) at him, dodging the explosive plasma projectiles with almost super-skirmisher reflexes, and horizontally jetpack boosting toward his ghost as fast as he could. Back in the ghost, he heads for a tunnel next to a metal signpost reading "To Surface," and airbrake-boosts the ghost up the tunnel's steep thirty-degree incline at its maximum speed of 250 mph. As he rapidly ascends upward, he contacts his squad, "Everyone, I'm alive, well, and on my way to the surface right now. There's a bomb that's gonna explode in the next few minutes, and I've no time to explain anything else about it besides the fact that it was the product of a highly resourceful yet traitorous Flood hostage. How are you guys doing?" "Commander, is that you?! It's nice to hear from you again! We lost only a single lower-ranked member a while back, but besides that exception, we're all still around, albeit fairly low on ammo and equipment. We should be outside the mines in the next thirty seconds, so see you then. Well, assuming you make it back alive, of course. Do you think you'll do it?" the commando skirmisher explains to and questions his superior. "Do I _think_? I KNOW!" Sammy answers him proudly as he rounds a sharp corner and continues his way upward past many a tiny Flood critter as the bomb keeps on ticking away for its final minute back down below.


	7. Never Give Up

**_Chapter VI: Never Give Up_**

Just as the surface comes in sight, Sammy hears a thunderous crash followed by a steadily growing hiss coming from behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he sees the explosion rapidly coming upon him. Right as he emerges from the collapsing tunnel opening, the fireball envelopes his vehicle and sends it cartwheeling across the landscape and into the side of a small rocky ridge, forcing its driver out of his seat and onto the ground below. With the ghost totaled and his shields mostly drained, Sammy shakes off the sudden shock of being ejected from his hovercraft and slowly regains his footing before glancing around to survey his new location. As he does so, his shields finish fully recharging. Battle-readied once more, he notices a single contact on his motion tracker. The target lies straight ahead on the other side of what was the tunnel's end, but it seems to fade in and out periodically, as if to imply that it is moving, stopping, and moving again repeatedly. Not afraid of taking any chances considering what he had gone through only moments before, he turns on his camo and warily approaches the enemy, which turns out to be none other than an ex-elite Flood creature wielding a storm rifle. Unimpressed, Sammy takes it out with his focus rifle at medium range. Immediately upon eliminating his initial target, his motion tracker lights up with hostiles all at once, toward which he instantly spins around to face. In front of him, a group of angered ex-grunt and ex-elite Flood, several dozen smaller Flood buggers, and five bugger-spewing Flood scramble to execute their dead ally's assailant. Thankfully, Sammy's active camouflage is more-than-effective enough to fool the Flood for an extensive enough length of time to allow for him to obliterate them all with his last remaining thrown plasma grenades, a few thrown spike grenades, and the last flurry of plasma shots remaining in his plasma repeater's first battery without detection. Swapping out the old plasma repeater battery for the fresh one and putting the old one into his plasma repeater battery recharger, he puts all of those things and the plasma repeater itself away in his hypercube before retrieving his beam rifle, focus rifle, and Kig-yar sniping eyepiece and defense gauntlets. Strapping the focus rifle onto his back, the gauntlets onto his cuffs, and locking his eyepiece firmly in place in front of his right eye, he climbs up onto a large nearby boulder, lies down into position, activates his eyepiece's night vision to help see through the relative darkness of the planetoid's surface, and patiently awaits his next set of targets.

"All units, this is Commander Sim. I'm still alive, but I'm in the perfect sniping position and don't wish to be disturbed until my sniping foray is over. Continue on approach to my current location, but be on constant lookout for enemies that could appear randomly and without warning. Commander Sim out," he notifies his squad before going silent and looking back into his beam rifle's scope. One minute passes. Then another. And another. And another. After five minutes of waiting, Sammy begins to get slightly frustrated with the sudden lack of activity, but presses on with it anyway. Five more minutes pass. Then another five. And another. And another. By now, the amount of time his active camouflage can remain in use for has started to get low, not only due to how much time has passed here with it on, but also from earlier as well, as it had not completed recovered from its relatively frequent use inside the mines. Fearing it might run completely out later when he needs it most, he deactivates it. Shortly afterward, several ex-brute and ex-elite Flood come lumbering into plain view many meters ahead of his sniping post armed with more storm rifles, plasma repeaters, plasma rifles, brute plasma rifles, needlers, and even a couple focus rifle of their own. Taking his time, he snipes each target one by one, taking special note of how most of the ex-elites and some of the ex-brutes have functioning energy shields of their own, several bars of it in a few cases, taking little to no return fire in the process. Fifteen seconds after the last enemy falls, more come to take their place. Sixty more dead ex-Covenant Flood later, a huge swarm of little Flood appear from the same location and making a beeline directly for Sammy's position. Most of them are dead by the time they get there thanks to precision focus rifle firing on his part, but a few remaining ones climb up the boulder and are able to leap onto Sammy. Freaking out, he almost falls from his vantage point, but he resists and stays on the big rock. However, he learns a new tactic—if one of the little Flood beasties contacts his shield, it gets "zapped" by the shield and is immediately killed off, taking down virtually no shielding in the process. He figures that while it could be a useful strategy for saving ammunition in the future, it could inadvertently drain his shielding enough to make him more vulnerable to far greater threats, despite even having twenty-one whole bars of shielding to work with.

Next, several critter-emitting Flood creatures waddle into the combat zone alongside a tightly-packed cluster of ex-grunt, ex-jackal, and ex-skirmisher Flood. Once the ex-jackal and ex-skirmisher Flood armed with a beam rifle have been taken out, Sammy easily sends the remaining Flood in the area to oblivion, although he runs out of beam rifle shots for his first battery while doing so and has to swap batteries with it the same way he did for the plasma repeater and complete a similar set of actions for it as well. After concluding that no more enemies will come, or at least any time soon, he leaves the safety of his boulder and walks over to all the many Flood bodies littering the ground looking for any useful weapons to scavenge, especially the beam and focus rifles. Before he has the chance to do so successfully, a huge number of fairly small neutral-colored contacts appear on his motion tracker from the other side of the large boulder. Not knowing exactly what to expect, he puts away his beam rifle and readies his focus rifle. At last, they arrived: it was a very large group of some kind of airborne Flood form that, while not much bigger individually compared to the other small Flood creatures from before, were equally hideous and formidable in higher quantities. Wasting no time, Sammy begins firing on them with his focus rifle nonstop, only pausing briefly to avoid accidentally overheating the weapon. Once the vaguely birdlike Flood things close in enough on him, they unleash a greenish-black torrent of presumably toxic ooze at Sammy with remarkable accuracy, which he either dodges or blocks with his now active energy shield gauntlets. To combat these new creatures effectively while evading the majority of their attacks, he intersperses dodging and blocking with moving and shooting his energy gun. Eventually, all hostiles have been quelled, and in their wake, a great mass of heaped ex-Flood corpses lie.

Next, without a moment's notice, more contacts appear, this time in a small nook just around the boulder. Seeing that these enemies are stubbornly holding out behind cover, Sammy decides to pursue them, but stealthily with his active camouflage on again, even though it had hardly recharged from its last use. The foes in question were three ex-elite and three ex-brute Flood. Each of their personal armaments varied: the first ex-elite Flood carried dual energy swords, the second ex-elite Flood wielded a concussion rifle, and the third ex-elite Flood hauled around a large portable plasma cannon that had been forcibly removed from its original base, giving it a limited amount of shots left in its battery. As for the ex-brute Flood, the first was armed with a plasma launcher, the second with a fuel rod cannon, and the third with something Sammy had never seen before—dual gravity hammers. Though he was highly curious to know how one would effectively utilize two gravity hammers simultaneously in combat, that curiosity would have to be set aside for another time. Instead, he sticks a spike grenade to each one, only to realize that the ex-elite with the plasma cannon, the ex-brute with the fuel rod cannon, and the ex-brute with the dual gravity hammers all have shields. In response to that little problem, he continues to stick each one with a spike grenade until the each target expires. Right as he narrows their numbers down to the double hammer-toting Flood, the sole surviving savage somehow senses Sammy's presence, leaps into the air at least twenty feet toward him, and comes down with both hammers in unison, nearly crushing him and sending him flying back several feet, draining nearly one third of his shield in the process. Stunned, Sammy gets back on his feet, jumps back five feet, and unleashes his focus rifle on the savage mutant brute all-out before it could even think about getting in another attack. "Well, _that_ was certainly not quite what I expected!" he mumbles to himself, feeling somewhat amazed by what he had just seen. "Squad, what's your status?" he asks via the squad's open comm channel. "Don't worry sir, we're almost there!" the familiar voice from that same gunner grunt squadmate from earlier assures him. "Great, looks like I'm all clear over here for now. Let's hope it stays that way too. Commander Sim out," Sammy radios back just as his camo runs out and automatically enters its rather lethargic recharging cycle.

Suddenly, like a freak bolt of lightning out of nowhere, the biggest non-vehicular red dot he has ever seen in his life appears on his motion tracker and quickly moves in to corner him. Surprised at such a startling sight, he looks up at a gargantuan Flood monster with a pair of immense tentacle-like appendages flailing about on both sides of him. Both enthralled and terrified at the discovery of such a Flood form, Sammy stands there motionless and with his pulse racing as the ferocious beast roars at him sinisterly, discharging a dark green saliva-like goo from its "mouth" every which way. For most soldiers, thinking on the fly was not typically a requirement for successfully serving in the Covenant military. Conversely, in a few very specific circumstances, being able to do so in the heat of the moment could mean the difference between life and death in the field. Since he was a well-respected champion skirmisher, though, Sammy was quite the notable exception to the rule. After pondering which tactical course would be the best to take in mere fractions of a second, he chooses to snap out his hologram projector, attach it to his armor's chest plating, and activate a temporary decoy of himself to escape being so close to such a dangerous entity. Fortunately for him, the Flood monster takes the bait and begins lashing its tentacles out at the hologram while the real Sammy makes a break for the boulder. Back on top of the boulder again, he decides to get out his banshee and simply bombard the creature from the safety of the air, but as soon as he prompts for the hypercube to relinquish the banshee, the giant Flood beast has already deactivated the hologram and rams into the side of the boulder, knocking Sammy down and shoving the banshee over the boulder's edge…right into the grasp of the creature's tentacles!

As Sammy recovers from the jolt, the monstrosity grabs hold of the fallen aircraft and tosses it directly at him at an alarming speed, missing his head by only half a foot and exploding the banshee upon impacting the rock wall behind him. He then tries to jetpack skyward and rain down fuel rods upon the creature from above, but this strategy fails as well, for before he can even lift off a few feet from the boulder's peak, the raging beast grabs ahold of his left foot during midflight, spins him around like a ragdoll, and chucks him far across the area and into a small group of rocks around thirty meters away from the boulder. Lying flat on his back, Sammy now suffers from a concussion and almost passes out several times, but manages to maintain his consciousness just long enough to heal himself with some instant healing antidote. Noticing that his jetpack and hologram projector were either destroyed or damaged beyond any feasible repair, he then sees the Flood monster begin flinging large rocks and pieces of banshee debris at him. Not wanting to delay his offensive capabilities any longer, he immediately acquires, primes, and places a bubble shield just as the oncoming projectiles arrive. "Heh, nice try buster!" he thinks while he takes out his fuel rod cannon and prepares to fight back.

By now, the foreboding Flood fiend has taken notice of its potential victim's defensive countermeasures, has already broken into its equivalent of a sprint, and is charging straight for Sammy when he zooms in with his fuel rod cannon's scope, lines up his target, and lands a perfect series of five shots into the creature's tentacles. However, since the monster was using its tentacles in a defensive posture, it took no visible damage from the assault and continued bolting toward Sammy without hesitation once the fuel rods' explosive effects had worn off. Astonished at the big beast's level of inter-combat adaptation, predominantly its overt belligerence, he almost welcomingly accepts the fact that he will have to devise some fresh attack method just to handle this new enemy; after all, he was almost starting to grow bored with the original Flood foes he had formerly faced. Upon reaching Sammy's position inside the bubble shield, the monster slams its tentacles onto the ground, barely missing Sammy and destroying the bubble shield's shield generator. Seeing the perfect opportunity for retaliation, Sammy begins throwing spike grenade after spike grenade onto the creature's body, but to no visible effect. He then switches over to using incendiary grenades once the spike grenades run out, and after nailing the enormous Flood hostile with the last of those, it seems to be considerably weaker than before and is now resorting to attempting a few failed hit-and-run attempts on Sammy and staying mostly in a defensive stance. To counteract this, Sammy baits the creature by firing a barrage of fuel rods at it, forcing it to either dodge or block the attack with its tentacles. Once the beast's guard is down enough, he hastily switches over to his needle rifle and unleashes on its preliminary weak spots—the tentacle's connection points to the rest of the creature's body. Several fuel rod cannon and needle rifle clips later, the creature loses its first tentacle. Several more of each later, and the Flood behemoth has finally been rendered effectively "armless" by Sammy's persistent fuel rod fusillade and needle supercombines. Feeling somewhat cocky, Sammy's blurts out, "hey you big Flood freak, try to come and get me now!" before sticking his tongue out at it mockingly.

Almost as if the creature understood Sammy's boastful challenge, it immediately runs straight for him, absorbing clip after clip of fuel rods. Nervous about just how much more resilience the hellish leviathan has left in it, Sammy preemptively activates all four of his auto-turrets and swaps out his other two weapons for his focus rifle. With the auto-turrets now in play, he retreats back to the large boulder as they distract the creature for a few precious seconds. By the time he has arrived back on top of the boulder, the last remaining auto-turret has already been destroyed by the beast's humongous legs and he has already started to open fire upon it with his focus rifle. The creature reacts by charging the boulder again, but this time taking a giant leap onto the boulder itself, causing Sammy to slip off the boulders edge by the sheer force of its landing atop the boulder alone. His fall's impact breaks Sammy's left defense gauntlet and possibly his left arm as well, for once has landed on the ground, he feels a searing pain spread throughout most of his left limb. Cringing at the onset of such an agonizing bout, he heals his injury without a moment's hesitation. Then, before he could even begin to react, the Flood giant jumps off the boulder and lands… right onto Sammy! The considerable pressure of the initial blow takes down nearly half his shielding, but it is not long before several follow-up attacks from the creature's feet easily drain the rest. Struggling to move from the beast's immense weight and now coughing up blood, Sammy wonders if these are his final moments alive. "Well, I lived a good life while I did," he reflects. "But wait," he recalls, "I'm not prepared to go out like this! I'm prepared to live many more years before that day comes, and when it does, it'll be peacefully lying upon my own deathbed in the comfort of my own home with Zoy at my side! Not like this, cold and alone and at the mercies of a huge Flood scumbag!" Then, all at once, he remembers what Commander Djima had advised him earlier that day: "Listen to your wild warrior's heart!" He closes his eyes, clears his mind, and listens for an answer from far within the deepest depths of his skirmisher psyche. "That's it! I'm a wild warrior, and if there's one thing this wild warrior has learned through all his life's experiences, it's this— _NEVER GIVE UP_!"

All of a sudden, he felt like he had miraculously regained a heightened level of strength and a fully restored sense of vigor, and using his regained power, he successfully removes his powerblade from his hypercube, snatches it, and slices the Flood monster's left ankle open, causing it to stagger backward in pain and allowing for Sammy to heal himself of his internal injuries, scoop up his fallen focus rifle, get some distance between himself and the creature, and reassess the current situation. He determines that his greatest course of action to take is to dodge around the beast's body and unleash fuel rods upon its weak points, as getting out the anti-air wraith, as tempting as it was, sounded a bit too risky, for if the creature got too close for comfort, it could easily leap onto the hover-tank and disable its onboard weapons systems with its massive legs, leaving Sammy with no more feasible attack options. Plus, it would make him a much bigger target for the monster as a whole, and at extreme close range, it would make firing with the vehicle's built-in fuel rod cannons potentially suicidal due to all the inescapable splash damage he and his wraith would undoubtedly receive in the process. After riling up the angry anathema with a quick burst of focus rifle fire, he puts it away for his fuel rod cannon, but after realizing how low on fuel rod cannon ammo he is, he decides to get out the needler instead, as he did not have time to waste with the needle rifle's meticulous precision requirements. Once within range, the creature attempts to corner Sammy against the rock wall again, but Sammy nimbly thwarts this plan by building up some momentum, hopping onto the side of the wall, turning around, and rebounding off the wall and between the beast's legs, ending up behind it. While it tries to relocate Sammy from the temporary confusion incited by the use of such a sudden maneuver, he takes advantage of its acute lack of perception by unloading several full clips of needles into the vulnerable connective tissue surrounding its right leg's joint. The resultant supercombine explosions detach the leg completely, prompting the Flood monster to bellow in pain and fall from its newfound weight imbalance. Sammy does the same to its still thrashing left leg.

With the abomination lying defenseless at his feet, he breathes a sigh of relief and decides to plant all of his remaining fuel rod clips into the creature's "mouth" and detonate them with his final fuel rod cannon clip. As he prepares to do so, though, a large group of plasma launcher- and fuel rod cannon-wielding Flood of all different Covenant species show up to spoil Sammy's victory celebration. Seeing no better opportunity to literally go out with a bang, Sammy unloads the fuel rod clip from his fuel rod cannon, shoves it into the giant Flood monster's "mouth" along with the rest, stows the now empty fuel rod cannon into his hypercube, retrieves his invincibility power-up from it, and screeches out a blaring skirmisher war cry, to which the Flood open fire with their weapons and after which Sammy activates his invincibility, climbs on top of the colossal Flood creature's torso region, and jumps upward just as all the fuel rods begin to explode. This vaporizes the monster's body and sends Sammy soaring high into the air, giving him the perfect amount of time needed to pull out his beam rifle and snipe down all the raving Flood zombies below him, and entirely in midair too. After landing in style, he looks over to notice none other than his gunner grunt friend staring at him in total disbelief of what he had just saw.


	8. All in a Day's Work

**_Chapter VII: All in a Day's Work_**

"That was absolutely INCREDIBLE sir!" the shocked grunt exclaims elatedly. "Heh, I was… I mean _it_ was, wasn't it?" Sammy replies with a smile and a wink. "Ha, you bet! You the skirmisher dude!" the grunt barks back. "Oh yeah!" Sammy responds before doing a little victory dance and sharing a few chuckles with the grunt. "Is the area fully contained sir?" the commando skirmisher co-leader asks. "Yes, as far as I can tell. Keep an eye out for any stragglers though," Sammy tells him as he sends out a distress signal for extraction to Commander Djima. Upon receiving the signal, Djima answers back, "Understood Commander Sim. Your mission is accomplished. Expect a couple phantoms to arrive within fifty. This is _Celestial_ command, out." "Whoa, within _fifty_? It took nearly half an hour to reach here by dropship earlier. Did they anticipate something like this to happen?" Sammy inquires. "Actually Commander, those two grunt members of our small detachment teleported back onboard the ship with those two needler crystal mine hovercarts you requested us to recover. They did so to alert high command what was really going on down here based solely on the testimony of those fleeing miners," the minor skirmisher from way back near the beginning of their mine excursion reveals to him. "It's true sir, I was there too," the minor jackal tasked to accompany said skirmisher chimes in. "Huh, well that's some awfully clever thinking on your part boys! Good work!" Sammy compliments them with a warm grin and a short nod. Shortly afterward, the two phantoms arrive. "Ready for dust-off Commander," one of the pilots informs him. "Roger that. All right squad, let's get the heck out of this Flood-infested dump!" Sammy announces before taking roll call one final time this mission and boarding the closer dropship. "All remaining personnel have been safely evacuated. At Commander Sim's recommendation and Commander Djima's discretion, the _Celestial_ will immediately begin preliminary glassing procedures as per code six section thirteen of standard Covenant interspace protocol," Sammy's dropship's pilot alerts his home ship. "Understood. The Celestial is now rapidly approaching the planetoid, so expect collateral destruction of the target in T-minus five minutes," Commander Djima radios back.

While en route back to the _Celestial Asceticism_ , Sammy recounts a thorough description of just what went on deep down in those underground caves to his surviving squadmates. "Wow, that's some tale! You're lucky you made it out of there alive!" his gunner grunt companion states exuberantly once the recollection is complete. "Indeed, I am," Sammy confirms. "That traitorous elite character you mentioned, did he escape too?" his associate commando skirmisher queries. "I don't know for sure. I don't think so, but you never know in today's world—crazy stuff like that happens all the time thanks to our contemporary high-tech capabilities!" Sammy points out. "Be sure to give an accurate profile description of him to Commander Djima as soon as you meet him again so we can update our ship's onboard intergalactic criminal database posthaste," the commando advises him. "Not a problem Commando, not a problem at all," Sammy retorts. A couple minutes later, the phantoms arrive at the _Celestial_ 's main hangar bay and commence docking just as CV-626 begins to be glassed by the cruiser from sufficient range. Wasting no time, Sammy runs straight for the ship's control room and greets Commander Djima, describing the turncoat elite miner and having his profile entered into main memory motherboard of the ship's onboard ICDB mainframe. "Excellent job Commander! You'll be rewarded well for your exceptional bravery, leadership, and all rescue work accomplished under your direct control. The entire command crew applauds you for your efforts in this crisis! I have no doubt you successfully listened to your wild warrior's heart within out there!" Djima remarks with a respectful glare and Covenant salute. "That I did sir, but honestly, it's all in a day's work for me and my squad. I've only the highest gratitude for such an honor as that!" Sammy answers back happily, reciprocating the same salute to his superior in return. Following this, he removes the recovered corpses of his fallen squadmates from his hypercube and delivers them to the ship's makeshift mortuary. He does the same for the needler crystal-bearing mine hovercarts, but sends them instead to the ship's primary cargo storage area. He also removes his bloodstained armor and sends it to the onboard armor cleaning station for an all-inclusive washing cycle.

Later that evening, Sammy partakes of an elaborate celebratory feast prepared exclusively for him and his squad's surviving members. After that, with belly full and body tired, he returns to his personal quarters, locks the door, undresses down to his sleepwear, and takes care of his hygiene for the day. Taking another quick look in the mirror, he proudly smiles and says, "Another mission behind you and another day come and gone. Congratulations you wild warrior boy!" Turning off the lights, he crawls into bed and lays his weary self to rest. One might think that after all he had experienced earlier that day, he would probably sleep with a worried mind, the very thought of having an even worse nightmare than the one he had the previous night, but anyone assuming that could not be any farther from the truth; tonight, Sammy could rest peacefully, with all the indubitable assurance of another mission completed and another job well done. And that he certainly did.


	9. Epilogue

***** ** _Epilogue_** *****

Deep below the surface of Installation 06 lies a desolate Forerunner structure amidst a picturesque arctic backdrop. Within this structure, the installation's control room awaits. "So, do you have it?" a voice beckons. "By 'it' I assume you mean 'the Index,' correct?" another one resounds. "Of course I mean the Index you fool! Do you think I intentionally destroyed those mines for nothing? I mean business here, so if you refuse to meet my expectations, 'twill soon be the end for you, understood?" the first voice threatens the second. "Absolutely sir! I shall see to it that the Index for this sacred ring is retrieved at once!" the second voice assures the first. As the second voice's possessor leaves the area, the first voice's stares at the installation's control panel and smirks evilly. "Revenge is nigh for you Commander Sim, but this time, there's no escaping my grasp that easily, as I have an entire halo ring at my disposal!" the scheming fiend vows as his maniacal laughter echoes throughout the room's vast central chamber, culminating in a tone so vile, even the demons would be envious.


End file.
